Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 17 158. Shooting Arrows at the Wall of the Temple (ABL 1339)

~710 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238713

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 17
High confidence
(1) [Your servant] Marduk-apla-iddina: I would gladly die for [the king], my [lord]! Say to the king, my lord: (3) [As to what the king] wrote: "When you sent your soldiers (and) they penetrated into the inner city, they covered the temple wall with arrows" — (6) My soldiers gave one another the following orders: "Nobody may wound anybody, and the herald may not call up anybody!" Did they not give (such) orders to one another for fear of the name of God (lit., 'gods')? Why should we [be] against the people, and why should there be an arrow on the temple wall? (11) My men, who attacked and…

State Archives of Assyria, volume 17 — scholar edition (ORACC).

Transliteration

[ARAD-ka m]dAMAR.UTU—DUMU.UŠ—SUM-na a-na di-na-an / [LUGAL be-lí]-ia lul-lik um-ma-a a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia-a-ma / [šá LUGAL] iš-pu-ra um-ma ERIM-MEŠ-ka ki-i taš-pu-ru / ni-ka-si a-na ŠÀ-bi URU ki-i ú-nak-ki-su / šil-ta-ḫu É.SIG₄ É—DINGIR-MEŠ un-del-lu-ú / ERIM-MEŠ-ia šá ṭè-e-ma a-ḫa-meš iš-ku-nu um-ma mam-ma / mam-ma la i-maḫ-ḫaṣ ù NÍGIR mam-ma la i-de-ek-ku / ul a-na MU-⸢i⸣ šá DINGIR-MEŠ…

Scholarly note

Babylonian-language letter to Sargon II or Sennacherib, edited by Manfried Dietrich (SAA 17, 2003). ORACC text P238713.

Attribution

Image: Adapted from Manfried Dietrich, The Neo-Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib (State Archives of Assyria, 17), 2003. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2009-11, as part of the AHRC-funded research project “Mechanisms of Communication in an Ancient Empire: The Correspondence between the King of Assyria and his Magnates in the 8th Century BC” (AH/F016581/1; University College London) directed by Karen Radner. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P238713/..
Translation excerpted from Dietrich, M. 2003. The Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib. SAA 17. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa17/P238713/.

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